Weekly Roundup
Kara Walker, "A Warm Summer Evening in 1863", 2008. Wool tapestry with hand cut felt silhouette figure, 5' 9" x 8' 2". Edition of 5. ©Kara Walker. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, Banners of Persuasion, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
This week in Art21 artist news we have two tapestry makers, a silk archway, the master of Cremaster, an artist who likes to do laundry, a magical sound installation, environmental issues, creative explosions, and more.
- Opening January 8 at James Cohen Gallery, Demons, Yarns & Tales features hand-woven tapestries created by thirteen contemporary artists: Kara Walker (Season 2), Shahzia Sikander (Season 1), avaf, Peter Blake, Gary Hume, Jaime Gili, Francesca Lowe, Beatriz Milhazes, Paul Noble, Grayson Perry, Fred Tomaselli, Gavin Turk, and Julie Verhoeven. The exhibition was created by the London-based art organization, Banners of Persuasion, who commissioned each artist to design a tapestry, a medium foreign to his or her usual practice. Walker’s A Warm Summer Evening in 1863 uses an image published in Harpers Magazine during the American Civil War, captioned “The Destruction of the Coloured Orphan Asylum on 5th Avenue.” A black silhouette of a lynched female figure hangs in front of this scene. The exhibition will be on view through February 13.
- Renaissance Unframed, an exhibition at Carolina Nitsch Project Room in New York, consists of twenty-five encaustic drawings on muslin and two companion bronze sculptures by Season 3 artist Richard Tuttle. Tuttle’s drawings “explore fabric as a medium to receive color and as a tool to direct its movement” and the bronze works “represent the antithesis of the fabric on the wall.” The fabric pieces are rotated every 2 weeks with only five works being shown at a time. The exhibition is on view through January 9.
- On January 13, Season 2 artist Matthew Barney will speak at the Detroit Institute of Arts and discuss his newest project Khu, a performance and film loosely based on Norman Mailer’s 1983 novel, Ancient Evenings. Barney updates Mailer’s plot from an ancient Egyptian narrative to a present day account of reincarnation and rebirth set in an American landscape. Each chapter will be set in a different city and correspond to the seven stages of the soul’s departure from the body according to Egyptian mythology. The first chapter was performed in Los Angeles in 2007. The latest chapter takes place in Detroit. Barney’s lecture begins at 7pm; a (free) pass is required and can be obtained here.
- Through January 17, work by Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall is on view at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art in the exhibition Heartland. The show features site-specific installations and performances as well as drawing, photography, and video by artists and collaboratives working in, and in response to, Detroit, Kansas City, and other cities and rural communities across the region. Also included in the exhibition are artists Carnal Torpor, Compass Group, Cody Critcheloe, Jeremiah Day, Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, Design 99, Scott Hocking, Greely Myatt, Marjetica Potrč, Julika Rudelius, Artur Silva, Deb Sokolow, and Whoop Dee Doo.
- Gate (2005) by Season 2 artist Do-Ho Suh is now on view in the Los Angles County Museum of Art’s Korean art galleries. Made of translucent silk, the piece is a full-size rendering of one of the gates to the artist’s childhood home in Seoul. Suh’s father, the artist and scholar Suh Se-Ok, built the house based on the design of traditional Korean architecture of the 1880s.
- Rethink: Contemporary Art & Climate Change (part of the official culture program for the United Nations Climate Change Conference) is a collaboration of the National Gallery of Denmark, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, and Moesgård Museum. The exhibition includes more than 25 artists spread across the four venues. Each space is dedicated to a different theme: Relations, The Implicit, Kakotopia, and Information, respectively. At the Nat’l Gallery of Denmark, A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear, a 2008 film by duo Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) presents viewers with three scenes: gently flowing images of a lush river landscape, a dilapidated interior in an abandoned house, and footage of a young man who drums rhythmically on the slats of a Venetian blind. The piece, shot in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Delta, draws attention to the remaining wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear is on view through April 5. (Note: each theme/venue closes on a different day; check the website for more information.)
- Season 2 artist Maya Lin unveiled her new video, Unchopping a Tree, in Copenhagen last week. This is the latest iteration of Lin’s larger and last memorial project, What is Missing? The video addresses deforestation prevention and sustainable reforestation to reduce carbon emissions and protect endangered species and habitats — watch it here.
- In Roberta Smith’s review of Days and Giorni by Bruce Nauman (Season 1) — two sound installations on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — she writes: “Each piece consists of 14 recordings of seven people reciting the days of the week. Their voices are broadcast from 14 wafer-thin white speakers, around 23 inches square, arranged in seven facing pairs, one for each person’s voice. Each speaker is simply clipped to two wires strung tautly from floor to ceiling. It’s like paintings by Robert Ryman hanging on Fred Sandback’s string sculptures, and the effect is magical. Read more here.
- “A countdown began two minutes out. 90 seconds. One minute. 50 seconds. 40. 30. And so on. And then: fireworks! And then: fire! The blossom burned, glowing orange against the museum and the now dusky sky, and dark smoke billowed into the air. The crowd oohed and aahed.” Click here to read more about the recent “explosion events” by Season 3 artist Cai Guo-Qiang (as reported by Kris Wilton of Artinfo.com).
- Congratulations to Art21 artists Vija Celmins (Season 2), and Judy Pfaff (Season 4) who have been granted the United States Artists annual award for $50k.
- Season 4 artist Jenny Holzer has shared her morning routine, favorite household chore, travel rituals, and more with Times Magazine. Read her witty profile here.
- More on the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of works by Gabriel Orozco (Season 2): Man of the World, The New Yorker; Pic of the Day: Gabriel Orozco’s Home Run, Flavorwire; and Gabriel Orozco: The Art of the Readymade, WNYC.
Weekly Roundup
Hiroshi Sugimoto, "Lightning Fields 145", 2009. Gelatin-silver print, 22.9 x 18.4 inches. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery.
- New photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3) are on view at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco through October 31. Sugimoto’s latest body of work titled Lightning Fields depicts electricity. To create each image, the artist uses a Van De Graaff 400,000-volt generator to apply an electrical charge directly onto film. The result in each case is a unique, instantaneous image of an electrical current, sometimes resembling a meteor shower, or a “treeing effect” on the film.
- On October 21, Season 2 artist Walton Ford will sign copies of the popular edition of Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra at the TASCHEN Store in New York (107 Greene Street). Only 100 copies of the book will be available. The ticketed event begins at 7pm; reservations are accepted via telephone. New work by Ford will be displayed at Paul Kasmin Gallery beginning November 12.
- October 27 – December 23, two sculptures by Richard Serra (Season 1) — Blind Spot (2002-2003) and Open Ended (2007-2008) — will be on view at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. These similar concentric structures each consist of six weatherproof steel plates. Open Ended was exhibited at Gagosian Gallery in London last year. The New York exhibition brings both sculptures together for the first time.
- On November 7, a new stage performance by Season 5 artist Cao Fei will premiere at Teatro Astra/Artissima 16 Theatre Project in Turin. RMB City Opera (part of Fei’s ongoing RMB City project in Second Life) is based on the “model dramas” (Yang Ban Xi) of the Cultural Revolution period. Yang Ban Xi were the only politically-approved types of performance at the time, as traditional opera was banned by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing. Read more about RMB City Opera here.
- Art Review has released their 2009 Power 100 list, a look at “who’s who in contemporary art,” and a “guide to general trends and forces that shape the artworld.” Bruce Nauman (Season 1) comes in at #10; Jeff Koons (Season 5) holds the #13 spot; Mike Kelley (Season 1) is #20; and John Baldessari (Season 5) ranks #37. View the complete list.
- Paul Laster of ArtKrush has reviewed the “massive, energetic show,” New York Minute: 60 Artists on the New York Scene, which includes work by Barry McGee (Season 1). “Exploring street punk, wild figuration, and new abstraction, the artists in this colorful show represent a new generation of creative minds, responding to the world around them in rapid and unpredictable ways,” writes Laster. Read the entire piece on Flavorwire.
- Two concurrent exhibitions by Season 2 artist Maya Lin at Pace Wildenstein and Salon 94 have been reviewed by Justin Wolf (also on Flavorwire). He writes: “While not unimpressive, [Recycled Landscapes, at Salon 94] pales next to its Chelsea counterpart, but maybe that’s the point. Here the utterly polished gallery space has been transformed into an obsessive-compulsive’s playroom; refinement infused with touches of juvenility.” Read more…
- The new issue of Parkett (no. 86) features artists Josiah McElheny (Season 3), John Baldessari (Season 5), Carol Bove and Philippe Parreno. See excerpts and images from the publication here.
Economic Sur-realities: A Conversation with Bjøernstjerne Christiansen of SUPERFLEX
Danish art group SUPERFLEX has been exacerbating the art world for over a decade with its irreverent style of questioning, which hits hard at the foundations of the West’s economic system. But unlike traditional critiques of economics that are rooted in 19th- or 20th-century ideology, SUPERFLEX is able to generate seemingly new explorations into our economic dysfunction with projects that delve deep into our contemporary consciousness and our evolving relationship with copyright, environmentalism, global consumerism, and the Internet.
Left: photo of SUPERFLEX by Nikolai Howalt (Courtesy the Artists). Right: my Skype conversation with Bjørnstjerne Christiansen
I caught up with Bjøernstjerne Christiansen, one third of the Danish art trio, over Skype (he was in São Paulo, Brazil) to discuss the group’s work and his own thoughts about the latest failures of our global economic system. This transcript has been edited with the permission of the artist.
Hrag Vartanian: Were you surprised by the recent economic crisis?
Bjøernstjerne Christiansen: No, that’s the nature of economic systems. There is always someone thinking that he or she can develop a perfect system but it never works. Systems are doomed to collapse and restart in other ways and forms. It is interesting for us to examine and challenge the systems; that’s part of our work.
Flooded McDonald’s from SUPERFLEX on Vimeo.
HV: Can you tell me about your Flooded McDonald’s film, where you recreated the interior of a McDonald’s fast food restaurant and videotaped it being flooded? I noticed that it went viral on the web. I also felt that it comments on the economic meltdown.
BC: The film is open to interpretation, so we don’t want to point to McDonald’s as evil or anything too obvious, but it very much has to do with mass consumerism and the responsibility to deal with that. We wanted to make a film that would have several outputs and interpretations. We chose McDonald’s because it is one of the major brands of globalism. Even if people never go to McDonald’s, they know how it looks, smells and works. We made a replica of a classical McDonald’s, and the associations people have with that are important.
One can go into many interpretations about this…when things go wrong or too high-speed in our global economy, where is the personal responsibility? Also, it touches on the environmental disaster that mass consumerism creates. The strange thing is that recently in Europe, McDonald’s announced it will hire 15,000 new employees; it doesn’t seem much effected by the downturn.
HV: Is the Flooded McDonald’s the first SUPERFLEX project to go viral?
BC: No, the Free Beer project went viral. It is an open-source beer; it is free in the sense of freedom, not in the sense of “free beer.” We published the recipe and branding elements of Free Beer under a Creative Commons license (attribution: ShareAlike 2.5), which means anyone can use the recipe to brew their own and make money from it, but they have to publish their changes or improvements for others to benefit from their work. It has to do with intellectual property rights and how an idea or system from one context can be applied to another via this change—normal patterns of, in this case, production and innovation. When Free Beer was created, it was on the front pages of the New York Times, BBC, etc.
SUPERFLEX, "Free Beer," 2005. Courtesy the Artists.
Free Beer is about the battle over the system of rights. This is particularly important since it impacts the issue of people taking our rights. We look at the copyright system, the patent system, and we try to challenge all those systems because they have become too much part of our society. When someone has an idea, their first reaction is to run to the patent office and trademark the name or idea and 200 variations of it so that others have difficulty working on something similar. People haven’t been challenging this system much and we think it is a dangerous thing. We are locked into this and people aren’t thinking critically about what that means and what the consequences are.
HV: How does that viral aspect impact your work? Do you plan for it now? Does it impact the production of the work?
BC: If you are the kind of artists we are, then you have the ambition that your art is going to be discussed. You don’t have to be a populist, but you are aware of the power of global media and how issues are going to be discussed. You become aware of how to talk about it. So when you send out a press release, you talk in a different way with the media than with an art gallery crowd.
You don’t have to be political but engaged, and as an individual, you should have an interest in how our society is developing. If you have something to say, then you try to get it out there.
Carnegie Art Award 2008
Den Frie Udstillingsbygning is an art institution established in 1891 by a union of artists with the concerted purpose to provide an alternative to the aforementioned censured Forårsudstilling at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Characteristic for the artists was that they had the courage to revolt against tradition and the existing art world, and soon, Den Frie gained a reputation as an experimental lab for young and progressive artists as well as a venue, where one could experience Danish art at its best.
Recently, Den Frie hosted the Carnegie Art Award 2008 exhibition, where 26 Nordic artists presented 65 pieces, mainly consisting of oil on canvas, photography, sculptures and film. Winner of the prestigious award is Swedish Torsten Andersson, who works with two-dimensional configurations of three-dimensional objects. Thus, he has created his own language within art, where the two-dimensionality steps out of the flat paintings and enters into a close proximity with the viewer. Runner up is Danish Jesper Just. Just has especially received acknowledgement for his narrative films charged with a seductive and magic imagery, which explores the scopes of identity and human relations. The narrations take place in diverse settings, paying homage to different film genres such as the musical, drama and film noir. Jesper Just perennially succeeds in creating a dense and intimate atmosphere as well as a distinct area of tension between subject and object. Third prize winner is John Kørner, also Danish, who, with his open attitude towards painting and its traditions, primarily works within the world of painting. His characteristic and expressive paintings are often incorporated in complex installations or orchestrations, which includes the viewer within the piece.
Other interesting works in the Carnegie Art Award exhibition, which will be on view in Iceland from June 19, are Danish Ellen Hyllemose, who challenges the meeting between the everyday and the exceptional. Her exhibited works are montages of medium-density fiberboards, painted and covered with richly colored lycra, laying a filter between the work and the gaze of the viewer. Remarkable is also Danish Allan Otte, who employs a special technique including tape and spray paint to create oddly realistic landscape paintings. His points of departure for the motives are images found online and then digitally processed. Otte’s settings are empty, however still include the trace of human activity. And then there is Danish Ferdinand Ahm Kragh, who, a bit like Parson the New School for Design in New York-student, Lars van Dooren, works with formal compositions and drawings of a difficultly defined space. His drawings, which consist of parallel, thin lines, drawn with pen or pencil and a ruler on paper, either center on a utopian architecture, an abstract, futuristic landscape or a visualization of sound. Ahm Kragh’s works seem flawless, but when you take a closer look, you’ll see that all lines aren’t perfectly linear, which adds energy to the works.
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EXIT and Enter
I’ve already mentioned that one way to catch up on the contemporary Danish art scene is to get a glimpse of Forårsudstillingen at Charlottenborg, but another and maybe even more obvious starting point may be the creative and innovative EXIT 08 exhibition at Kunsthal Gl. Strand, which presents works from this year’s graduation students from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, thus emphasizing their entry into the enormous world of art.
Currently in its 12th year, EXIT 08 showcases works from 24 students and although it may not all be international, the exhibition certainly does rouse and entertain the viewer. There are three floors, each presenting its own dynamic layout and connection between the exhibited pieces, resulting in three overruling themes, which let the works extend beyond the exhibition and into our memory and social consciousness. And regardless of the fact that EXIT 08 is a student exhibition, the themes are universal and pivotal in contemporary art. Thus memory is regarded as a reenactment of motives from the past as a reflection on the present; art as social conscience has flourished since the 90s; and the longing to break down the institutional nature of art is desire inspired by the modern avant-garde movements in the 1920s.
Art & Arms
Controversial and highly provocative Danish artist Kristian von Hornsleth has established a new artistic and capitalistic project, Hornsleth Arms Invest Corporation, HAIC, which challenges the border between art and reality; it sells weapon shares as artwork and donates half of the profit to a charity fund. The shares are priced $4,000 each and by making a purchase, you will not only be a co-owner of HAIC, but also be kept responsible for begging children with amputated limbs, brainwashed young men holding Kalashnikovs, and subsequently contributing to creating a charity fund based on blood money.
Each share is decorated with fighter planes, cluster bombs, nuclear arms, vultures, naked ladies, and carry the inscription Per Ruinam ad Humanitatem (“via ruin to humanity”), which is also the title of his exhibition on view at Gallery Poulsen Copenhagen until June 18th. The project focuses on one of the free market economy’s moral dilemmas and Hornsleth says that the idea indeed originates from a fascination of how the stock market works, and how this market shares mechanisms with the art world. The project succeeds in turning our morality upside down and the interesting thing is not whether it’s actual art, but whether it’s interesting as art. And although I’m very ambivalent as to what to make of the weapon shares, I think the project is interesting, as Hornsleth touches on one of the big moral dilemmas of the free market economy. In an impudent and cynic way, HAIC points at connections between war and profit and between charity and profit, which we tend to keep separate. I do, however, also locate a fundamental problem in the project in case Hornsleth’s project adds to the actual weapon sale.
Barthes revisited: photographic experiments
Our exposure to the photographic image on a professional as well as a private level has steadily increased since the first photograph saw the light of day in 1839. The photographic medium has become a natural part of our everyday life and has changed our whole way of seeing and perceiving. We have grown accustomed to photography so that our decoding of it happens unconsciously. Nevertheless, there are still some photographies that for some reason talk to us and make us stop in order to more closely examine what it is in the particular photograph that affects us, thereby separating it from the enormous amount of graphic material we are exposed to daily.
Photography appears to be a fundamental form of communication, yet it still seems difficult to define. The perception and the theorization of photography and its context is placed in a paradoxical field and for a long time, the discussion was based on whether photography could be defined as art, rather than exploring the core of its meaning. However, if you’re trying to catalogue the theoretical intersection surrounding photography, there are two main directions, namely the formalist essentialism and the discourse of analytic contextualism. While Walter Benjamin is an proponent of the first and John Tagg for the latter, Roland Barthes, although predominantly essentialist, performs between these two theoretic polarities. In Camera Lucida (1980), Barthes develops themes such as proximity and distance, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death. He identifies the exchange of meaning between the photography and the viewer and mentions two elements, which he thinks are present in a successful photography, studium and punctum. While studium is the reflection of the relationship between the obvious symbolic meanings of a photograph, punctum, is the personally touching detail within it, which establishes a direct relationship with the photographed object or person.
With this in mind, I was impressed as well as surprised a few days ago when I attended the opening of the exhibition Here I never wander alone at the Co-Lab gallery in Copenhagen.
Rebirth of Danish art and design
If you want to keep track of modern Danish art and design, Forårsudstillingen at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen is a pivotal point of departure. Yesterday was the final day of the annual censored exhibition, where artists like Per Kirkeby and Olafur Eliasson once had their debut, and I went there to catch a last glimpse of the exhibition’s proposition as to what the Scandinavian art scene will look like in the years to come. In its 151 year-history, Forårsudstillingen obviously draws on a number of traditions and codes of practice; however, a new and substantial initiative has been introduced this year, triggering critics to designate it a rebirth and a mall-like ornamentation. The 2008 exhibition has been curated much in line with the direction of the art scene in general, where hierarchies between different art directions are loosened, juxtaposed, and discussed.
Chief curator is the internationally acclaimed, New York-based designer Karim Rashid, who is responsible for the overall design and title of the exhibition, 21. With this title, Rashid lets the exhibition leap into the twenty-first century, where the boundaries between art and design become increasingly vague. Therefore, this year’s exhibition offers fashion, graphic design, and sound art aside from the more traditional genres of architecture and visual arts—all indicating renewal and a relation to our current social, political, spiritual, and technological development. Karim Rashid’s own aesthetic expression is present throughout the exhibition, not only in the selection and composition of the works, but also in the separate works that have been placed on walls covered with his colorful, digitally designed wallpapers, manifesting the unity of the exhibition as a whole.
Sally Mann on Denmark’s radar
Following is a special report on Season 1 artist Sally Mann, just in from our fabulous former intern Karen Johanne Bruhn, now back home in Copenhagen…
During the past few weeks, American artist Sally Mann has received a lot of attention in Denmark in connection with the opening of her retrospective exhibition, Sally Mann: Photographs at The National Museum of Photograpy in Copenhagen. National TV and newspapers have featured her in numerous interviews and features; the Royal Library screened Steven Cantor’s documentary on Sally Mann, What Remains, and she also gave an artist talk for approximately 500 listeners on a recent sunny Friday night.
The retrospective exhibition focuses on three of Sally Mann’s artistic projects: Immediate Family, Deep South and What Remains. The overall themes in the poetic and romantic—yet nonconformist—sequences of pictures are beauty, death, and the passing of time. The pictures are intimate and personal, but concurrently deal with universal memories, emotions, joys, and fears. They expose a beauty but also bear a touch of melancholy and sentimentality within, thereby becoming pleasant as well as devastating for the viewer.
What makes Mann an outstanding photographic artist is not only her choice of often banal and easily accessible motifs, but also their unique approach to the photographic process. Whereas most photo-based artists work with new digital techniques, she has chosen to return to the origin of photography: Deep South as well as What Remains are made from wet plate collodion negatives. At present, this process, which was primarily used in the period after Frederick Scott Archer’s proclamation of the technique in 1851, has almost been replaced by other techniques. Continue reading »
